


Here, Now

by octopedingenue



Category: Bourne (Movies), Bourne Legacy (2012)
Genre: Atlanta, Domestic Fluff, Domestica, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Hopeful Ending, Non-Linear Narrative, Plot Handwaving, Post-Canon, Romance, Slice of Life, Yuletide, Yuletide 2012
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 20:21:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/octopedingenue/pseuds/octopedingenue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>"Aaron. What do you think I'm doing here? With you."</em><br/> </p><p>Aaron thinks too much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here, Now

**Author's Note:**

  * For [infiniteeight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/infiniteeight/gifts).



The first time Marta kissed Aaron was to say goodbye. Maybe that said something about them,  about the way they fit together, or maybe it said something about Aaron, that he held so fiercely to that memory anyway.

 

* * *

 

Marta Shearing liked her first cup of coffee black, at near-scalding temperatures, before her brain was awake enough to process the bitter flavor. If she had time in the mornings, which was almost never, she liked to bolster her regimen with an additional half-pot of fluffy-sweet, cinnamon-dusted soy mochas she could savor over a leisurely crossword puzzle.

Within the espionage program that had redefined Aaron's life, this kind of intimate, personal detail he obtained through precise and painstaking observation was considered standard reconnaissance. In a general, legal context, it was considered stalking. In the tiny one-bedroom Atlanta apartment that Marta and Aaron shared, it was the mark of a benevolent and compassionate roommate and caffeine supplier.

Aaron's self-appointed role was to wait by the door with two carafes in hand while Marta fumbled sleepily for her keys. Commuting to the CDC through Atlanta rush hour traffic didn't allow for leisurely crossword puzzles, but he helped where he could. "The mocha is decaf," he told her. "The coffee's mostly placebo anyway, but you still haven't been getting enough sleep."

"Bless you, I gotta run," Marta gasped out, swiping the coffee from Aaron and giving him a quick one-armed hug as she passed.

"Got your keys?"

"Got 'em."

"Got your knives?"

She turned back at the door to look at him, with the thoughtful pause as she really considered  him. "Always," Marta said, and kissed him, and was gone.

 

* * *

 

The end, when it came, hadn't been a bang or whimper or still small voice in the wilderness. It was an annoyed babble of voices that rose in a counterpoint chorus on the Internet, complaining of military overspending and political accountability and the growing popularity of Jason Bournecat image macros who shot laser beams from their deadly spycat eyes and rolled away the stones hiding corruption using their furry kitty deathpaws. So many people dead, so many betrayals and compromises and ruined lives, and the blow that sent it crumbling came from a flock of bored, underpaid computer techs and the weight of crowdsourced nosiness on Reddit.

  
Aaron watched it all through the filter of international media, but somehow out here on the run it all mattered very little. The life these flames might have touched was far away and unreachable, and nothing could make him want to resurrect that past that he'd excised willingly.

  
Until one night, a layover in New Zealand, they were waiting to hire on a fishing boat to Singapore next week. They had a room rented by the harbor, Marta was out buying food, Aaron went into the tiny adjoining bathroom to splash water on his face, and nothing, nothing had changed when he came out. There was no sign to match the ice up his back, but Aaron was already drawing his gun the same instant, already turning into the standoff with the solidly-built man in the room, his gun trained on the same spot on Aaron's skull that Aaron's aim sought on his.

"Don't get excited," Jason Bourne said. "This is a social call." 

 

* * *

 

Aaron Cross (ex-soldier, stay-at-home barista, burgeoning food scientist, journeyman-level carpenter and herb gardener) could not stop training for worst-case scenarios any more than he could stop imagining worse scenarios to neutralize. But Atlanta's warm climate put a damper on his best "climb icy mountains while chased by angry wolves" plans, so he stuck to the closest, tame equivalent: indoor wall-climbing. Marta came along willingly to this training exercise devoid of, as she put it, "mud, projectile weapons, or trying to kick people to death."

Actually, these days Marta did most of the climbing, while Aaron spotted her from below and critiqued her form. Aaron was still wary after one climb had netted him an audience of curious observers gawking and even filming him with their cell phones.

"It was your own fault for making it look so easy," Marta told him, scrubbing her hands on a towel in prep for another climb. "No one was expecting you to climb the wall without using hands."

"It looked easy because it's not as hard as you think it should look," Aaron argued.

"Wait, go back, I need to diagram that sentence."

"Just for that, you're climbing one-handed."

"No!"

"Come on, I'll be right here to catch you."

"Because I'll definitely fall, you jerk." But Marta was laughing. She shrugged the rest of the safety vest over her shoulders and shimmied up the first handholds. The vest wasn't strictly necessary--she was a skilled climber by now, and Aaron really would react in time to catch her from any fall. But flouting the building's safety rules drew yet more stares.

Marta folded one arm behind her neck, arched her back, and scrabbled with her free hand at the handhold overhead. Aaron swallowed.

What Aaron would never say aloud, what he would hardly acknowledge in the quiet of his own head: working as Marta's spotter gave him a peaceful, meditative period in which to gaze in contemplative appreciation of Marta's perfectly sculpted ass.

Aaron felt a trickle of guilt at the thought, even as he buried it under an automatic mental tally of the room's possible escape routes (six, eight if he risked massive lacerations by kicking through a glass skylight at the top of the highest climbing wall), even though the thought was allowed, in the context of the room Marta shared with him at night. She was one of the most intelligent people he'd ever known. She made science jokes with elaborate, terrible puns in Latin.

Marta lunged across a gap to the next toehold, her thighs flexing. Oh, god.

 

* * *

 

Bourne tossed a manila folder onto the bed--neither of their guns wavered. "There are two plane tickets in there. In three weeks, there's going to be a hearing in D.C. about the program's operatives who are still alive. Show up on time, kiss the right amount of ass, you'll both get amnesty, if they don't shoot you on sight."

"What about you? They're giving you amnesty too?"

"Not going to happen," Bourne said. "I'm just passing along the message to the rest of you."

"Bullshit," Aaron said. His voice cracked, his throat was so dry. He licked his lips and tried again. "You're just out here rounding up the little lost lambs, out of the goodness of your heart. Because you're bored or because it's a trap?"

"I made this situation happen," Bourne said. "Treadstone is dead, and good fucking riddance. But the operatives they made that are loose, without Treadstone on the leash, they may not have anything holding them back." Bourne tilted his head, studying Aaron down the barrel of his gun. "If that's the case I'll take care of you myself."

Aaron remembered the final assassin sent after them in Manila, whose relentless pursuit had only been stopped by a faceful of concrete-covered steel. He imagined that relentlessness set adrift and swallowed. "That's not going to happen here."

"I hope not." Bourne's voice was tired. "It sounds like you've got something to lose, at least. Try not to fuck it up."

Marta's footsteps at the door, her key scraped in the lock, and Aaron would not, _would not_ look away at the distraction, to call out warning or reassurance. But the opening door bounced a flash of streetlight into his eyes, dazzling, just for a moment, and it was enough. Aaron had his gun trained on empty air against the open window, while Marta froze at the door. Her hand slid to the knife at her waist. "Aaron? What is it?

The folder lay on the bed between them. It would be simple enough to brush aside ("it's nothing, just a noise"), balanced against the danger it might pose. Their old lives were behind him, the world was ahead. Cut adrift, Marta's only place was at his side.

Aaron holstered the gun. "I had a visit from Jason Bourne," he said. "We need to talk."

 

* * *

The drive from D.C. to Atlanta would take a day, maybe a little more. "My roommate from post-doc still runs a lab at the CDC," Marta said. "She thinks she can get me a gruntwork job there, cleaning slides or double-checking math. Or maybe I can go clean the gorilla cages at Emory's primate facility." She turned on the car radio, flipping aimlessly through channels. "And you can do the apartment-hunting. Look at all the concrete nuclear bunkers you want. I'll be too busy shoveling gorilla shit."

"Welcome to America," Aaron said.

They'd signed their freedom away, or maybe signed it back on, and both of them itched to leave  the day behind them as far away as they'd left continents behind.

"I don't know whether I swore to tell everyone everything or tell nobody anything," Aaron said. "All of the documents seemed to demand both at the same time."

"I know, right? And confidentiality agreements worked out so well for me before."

"At least this time they're holding you hostage to my good behavior."

 Marta shot him a curious look. "Same here," she said. "Mutual entrapment."

They made it four hours into the drive until the radio gave out as the sun went down. Aaron started feeding the CD player cheap country albums. Marta lasted another hour before she broke. "Turn it off, turn it off, Toby Keith is a sexist douchebag, and this song is disgusting." 

"It's stupid but it's funny," Aaron protested. "Guys from the service used to blast it all the time."

Marta stared at him, eyes narrowed, and Aaron swallowed the sudden dread certainty that this, _this_ would be the hill she would die on. After long, bloody months and thousands of miles of loneliness together, she would draw the line at douchebags in cowboy hats.

"Go back to the song Willie Nelson did with him," Marta said finally. "You're a flawless human otherwise, it's only right you should have no taste."

 Aaron let out the breath he'd been holding. 

They listened to "Beer for My Horses" on repeat for the next forty miles, until the radio picked up the faint FM scratchings of a classic rock station. (Marta: "Aerosmith is playing on an oldies show. Apparently while I was out of the country I officially became old.") Miraculously, the next truck stop had a bootlegged Johnny Cash boxset for sale. 

"Wake me up when it's my turn to drive," Marta said. 

Aaron wanted to save this moment in a box in his head, to take it out like a photograph should everything else be taken from him: Marta snoring softly on his shoulder and "If I Were A Carpenter" cutting a path through the night.

  

* * *

 

The night before the hearing, Aaron set out the brief sketch of his plan: Marta would sell Aaron out in any of her testimony and walk away free. Aaron would take care of himself. It was a simple plan, a little fuzzy with jetlagged exhaustion, but totally feasible.

Marta, however, wasn't impressed by it. "Aaron. What do you think I'm doing here? With you."

Getting amnesty, that seemed obvious. But no, she meant _staying_ with him _in general_.

Aaron said carefully, "You're a survivor. I respect that."

"Is that what you think this is?" Marta said. "Some kind of, of Stockholm syndrome where I'm the poor victim who's fallen in love with her kidnapper, because I don't have a choice? Because I'm a _survivor_."

 "I just want you safe," Aaron said, because he was an idiot who couldn't stop talking. "Walk away if you can, please, I just want you safe--" 

"So what about you? Because I don't think I was imagining on your end, that you were--am I your Florence Nightingale crush, because I saved your life, your _brain_ , you think you owe me--"

"No," said Aaron, because he still couldn't help himself. "No, it's not like that. Not anymore."

He remembered how he'd watched her in the program, the pretty doctor with the professional smile who'd never deliberately met his gaze or learned his name, whose hands never wavered on the syringe when she tapped him for blood or sedated him for another procedure. But her hands had been warm on his skin, all the same.

"I owe you so much. And you took so much from me," Marta told him. "And I know, I know it's the same for you. So don't pull any of this, this noble self-sacrifice bullshit on me. Whatever we're doing here--"

"Marta, you don't have to--"

Marta grabbed his hand and squeezed it, hard, her nails digging painfully into his skin. He could still break her grip with ease, but he'd have to dislocate her wrist to do it. "I had my chance to lose you if I'd wanted," she said. "I didn't take it. Whatever we're doing here, we are doing it together."

Aaron studied their linked hands, all the better to avoid eye contact. He made his voice as flat as he could as he said, "Even if you left, I'd follow you anyway. Just to be sure you made it safe to wherever you were going."

Marta's eyes were wet and her mouth was trembling, but when she pulled Aaron's face down to hers, her hands didn't shake at all.

 

* * *

 

The first time Marta kissed him, Aaron thought it was goodbye. He hadn't minded, but he hadn't been right, either. That was something he could hold fast, whether this lasted, whether he fucked it up or made it stronger: When in weakness Aaron had tried to let her go, he'd been wrong to think Marta wouldn't vow to stay.

"I'm not going to get the career track I was on at Morlanta," Marta said, more brisk than regretful. "Even before I fled the country, the security clearances I blew off alone would...and what media bothered to cover the shooting at the lab before the CIA or whoever managed to cloak it in national security to hush it up--"

"It probably wasn't CIA," Aaron said. "They don't bother on domestic operations. This was your average cross-agency military intelligence fuckery."

Marta shot him a look. "Not the point," she said. "Between the shooting and fleeing the country and the news deciding I'd stolen lab samples to make meth in my basement, by this point I'm academically notorious at best. If I were any human resources department, I wouldn't let me near the smallpox samples either."

Aaron was silent, but he nudged his shoulder against hers gently in solidarity. For either of them, there wasn't really a way to say "sorry for getting you into this" when "getting you into" involved "saving your life," and "into" was the place they'd thought they wanted to be in the first place. Apologies got repetitive.

"Not the point," Marta repeated. "Anyway. All I mean is--I'm not stuck here, if there's somewhere you want to go, something you want to do. We can go there, I'll find something. You've got your whole life to figure out, so."

"We'll figure something out," Aaron said. "But this, this works for me."

Marta said, "For now."

"Now works for me," he said.


End file.
